The City of Johannesburg’s ability to provide reliable electricity to residents is being severely threatened as power infrastructure is being pilfered on an industrial scale operated by armed criminal syndicates.
In the latest incident two security guards were held at gunpoint at the City Power’s Cydna substation near Norwood at 04:00 am on Wednesday morning (30 March 2022) after being attacked by a gang armed with high-caliber assault rifles driving in unmarked 4x4s. After overpowering security guards - the gang made off with several hundred kilograms of underground copper cabling, using their vehicles to rip this critical infrastructure from the ground.
“This is starting to show all the signs of criminal groups that are well resourced and organized. It is no longer just theft but robbery on a grand scale,” Cllr Michael Sun, MMC for EISD, said.
Since July 2021 to date, 1456 cases of vandalism and cable theft have been reported to City Power which costed City Power R 24 million in damages and repairs. With confrontations between City Power security and would be criminals occurring on almost a daily basis at substations and other infrastructure points around Johannesburg. Hotspots include Lenasia, Alexandra, Northriding, Mulbarton, Ennerdale, Nasrec, and Roodepoort. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most of the city’s cable servitudes pass through open fields, making them vulnerable to theft.
“We will be beefing up security at hotspots and ensuring we have more personnel at all our substations. We are also installing CCTV systems to act as an early warning system,” MMC Sun added.
“But the simple fact is that if we don’t have an urgent intervention from the South African Police Service (SAPS) on this issue, it will remain a critical challenge to providing reliable electricity to Johannesburg residents. “It is only SAPS that can investigate these criminals and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that can prosecute them.”
Cable theft is responsible for most of our outages in the City, and cause major disruptions to the Johannesburg energy grid. The overall losses suffered by City Power in the total areas of supply due to copper cable theft and damage to electricity essential infrastructure for the 2021/22 financial year alone was R 24 million.
Community can play a key role in stamping out cable theft and robberies and MMC Sun calls upon all residents to play their part in reporting all suspicious behavior in or around the city’s electricity infrastructure to authorities.
“With the absence of these enforcement powers we will have to rely on our own already stretched capacity and are thus calling on all community members to act with the City too. If you see something suspicious, report it immediately.”
This approach has already bore some fruit when directly after MMC Sun hosted a public meeting to update on progress in upgrading the Eldorado park substation, two would be cable thieves were caught red handed by regional City Power manager Tiro Mokgosi, local ward councilor Juwairiya Kaldine and community members.
The two suspects were handed over to the Eldorado Park police station and are expected to appear in court soon.
“When the team arrived on the scene the cable thieves were still busy. But ran away when they saw the members approaching,” MMC Sun Said.
“Unfortunately for the cable thieves they could not outrun the members and were caught. I hope they will receive lengthy sentences for the crimes they are committing against their community.”
Issued by:
Cllr Michael Sun
MMC Environment and Infrastructure Services
City of Joburg
For media queries, please contact:
Nickolaus Bauer
Deputy Director: Stakeholder and Communication Management
Office of the MMC Environment & Infrastructure Services
Email: NickolausB@joburg.org.za
31/03/2022
